New look for Yarmouth affordable housing complex

Monday

Jun 9, 2014 at 3:38 PMJun 9, 2014 at 3:49 PM

Swan Pond Village, an affordable housing complex in South Yarmouth, celebrated the completion of an ambitious series of renovations with a grand reopening on Tuesday. Residents, local officials and representatives of Weston Associates, the company that owns the complex, marked the occasion with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Conor Powers-Smith csmith@wickedlocal.com

SOUTH YARMOUTH - Swan Pond Village, an affordable housing complex in South Yarmouth, celebrated the completion of an ambitious series of renovations with a grand reopening on Tuesday. Residents, local officials and representatives of Weston Associates, the company that owns the complex, marked the occasion with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The $6-million renovation project, begun last June, involved upgrades to nearly every facet of the property, including new roofs and windows for the complex’s 18 residential buildings, and new countertops, cabinets and microwaves for the kitchens of its 150 units. The project also saw the complete renovation of the units’ bathrooms, the installation of energy-efficient lighting, appliances and heating and cooling systems, the addition of new flooring and upgrades to fire alarms. Additional upgrades improved the complex’s accessibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Weston Associates Vice President of Operations Michael Packard said the project was due. “This was a good community, but it was old. It was built in 1979.” Time had taken its toll, and, rather than do patchwork improvements, the company decided on a complete makeover. “We did basically everything on the property. New roofs, windows, landscaping. We did all the apartment interiors.”

Packard said disruptions were minimal, and the complex’s 333 residents were not financially impacted. “Nobody’s rent was increased as a result of this project, and nobody was asked to relocate as a result of the project.”

Packard admitted there were some complaints, especially during the landscaping process, which saw the removal of dozens of trees due to safety concerns. He said those complaints came from a small minority of residents. “You can’t please all the people all the time. We had probably two or three people who were upset about the trees.”

Packard said most residents understood the need to remove the trees, which his company felt were too close to the buildings, and in danger of falling on them under severe weather conditions. “We always try to manage for the good of everybody, so that’s why we did what we did there,” he said. “We had a lot of people who came in and said to us, ‘We’re very happy you cut the trees down.’”

Packard said reactions to the project as a whole were similarly positive. “I’ve talked to a lot of the residents myself, because I would go down there during construction,” he said. “A lot of people were very excited.”

Packard credited a new loan program offered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development with helping Weston attract investors, and complete the renovations quickly and efficiently. “What’s unique about this program is it’s specifically designed to work with low-income housing credits,” he said. “The real benefit of this program is that it streamlines the process.”

The Swan Pond project was so successful, Weston plans to use the same HUD program for future projects across its 20-plus properties throughout New England.